The dynasty of Theodosius, or, eighty years' struggle with the barbarians : …
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The dynasty of Theodosius, or, eighty years' struggle with the barbarians by Thomas Hodgkin is a historical account written in the late 19th century. It surveys the late Roman Empire under the Theodosian house and its mounting confrontations with Goths, Huns, and Vandals, while tracing the Christianization of imperial power and the reshaping of Roman administration. Drawn from public lectures, it promises a clear, compact narrative of the Empire’s political machinery, key
battles and leaders, and the pressures that hastened the Western Empire’s decline. The opening of this work explains its origin as a brief lecture course meant to distill the author’s larger scholarship, then lays out a contents map and family trees before plunging into Lecture I’s vivid tour of the Roman world—beginning in Roman Britain and ranging to the Rhine, Danube, Near East, and North Africa—to convey the Empire’s scale. It sketches how Rome was governed: the Senate and People under the Republic, their decline, and the rise of the Principate under Caesar and Augustus, with the provinces benefiting even under bad emperors. Hodgkin then periodizes imperial history (from the Julians and Antonines through the third‑century anarchy) and details Diocletian’s restoration—enhanced imperial majesty, the four prefectures, and the attempted adoptive succession—followed by Constantine’s ascent, civil wars, and pragmatic alignment with Christianity, culminating in Theodosius making Nicene orthodoxy the state faith. Lecture II begins by showing the emperor’s courtly ritual, the language of deified sovereignty, and the layered bureaucracy described in the Notitia, from praetorian prefects to financial counts and the master of soldiers, noting both the system’s efficiency and its burdens. It contrasts immense urban wealth and spectacle with widespread provincial hardship—bread doles and circus fanaticism, the lot of slaves and coloni, and the crushing obligations of curiales—arguing that society was strained and hope diminished. Finally, it turns to the Germans, highlighting their shift from pastoralism to agriculture and the structure of their forest‑ringed village settlements, setting up the coming Roman‑Teuton encounter. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Hodgkin, Thomas, 1831-1913 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 06000818 |
| Title | The dynasty of Theodosius, or, eighty years' struggle with the barbarians : A series of lectures delivered to the Durham Ladies' Educational Association |
| Original Publication | Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889. |
| Credits | Brian Wilson, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta |
| Subject | Rome -- History -- Germanic Invasions, 3rd-6th centuries |
| Subject | Rome -- History -- Empire, 284-476 |
| Subject | Italy -- History -- To 476 |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 78826 |
| Release Date | Jun 7, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 329 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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